Abundance study of the two solar-analogue CoRoT targets HD 42618 and HD 43587 from HARPS spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study precisely measures the chemical compositions and fundamental parameters of two solar-analogue stars, HD 42618 and HD 43587, using HARPS spectroscopy to enhance understanding of stars similar to the Sun.

Contribution

It provides a differential abundance analysis of two solar-analogue stars with minimized systematic errors, refining their atmospheric parameters and revealing differences in metallicity and lithium content.

Findings

HD 42618 is a near-solar twin but slightly metal-deficient.

HD 43587 is more massive and evolved than the Sun.

Significant differences in lithium abundance suggest different internal mixing.

Abstract

We present a detailed abundance study based on spectroscopic data obtained with HARPS of two solar-analogue main targets for the asteroseismology programme of the CoRoT satellite: HD 42618 and HD 43587. The atmospheric parameters and chemical composition are accurately determined through a fully differential analysis with respect to the Sun observed with the same instrumental set-up. Several sources of systematic errors largely cancel out with this approach, which allows us to narrow down the 1-sigma error bars to typically 20 K in effective temperature, 0.04 dex in surface gravity, and less than 0.05 dex in the elemental abundances. Although HD 42618 fulfils many requirements for being classified as a solar twin, its slight deficiency in metals and its possibly younger age indicate that, strictly speaking, it does not belong to this class of objects. On the other hand, HD 43587 is slightly more massive and evolved. In addition, marked differences are found in the amount of lithium present in the photospheres of these two stars, which might reveal different mixing properties in their interiors. These results will put tight constraints on the forthcoming theoretical modelling of their solar-like oscillations and contribute to increase our knowledge of the fundamental parameters and internal structure of stars similar to our Sun.